IS SUFFERING AT THE MERCY OF CHANCE REALLY THAT BAD?

People fear things being random. They want to believe that if they suffer its in the plan of God and they are not at the mercy of blind chance.  A plan can be very difficult and complicated so it is possible for there to be a plan and yet for you there may as well not be.  It is very cruel then to sooth people with the plan story.  It is abhorrent.

Belief in a creator God is not comforting. A God who tells something to come out of nothing is not creating or causing it to come into existence. Something coming from nothing means it was uncaused. It is another way of saying uncaused. To say that something cannot come from nothing means it cannot happen for there is nothing there for it to come from. Religion agrees but says God can do it. But that is to say God can do the impossible. Nothing by definition means that nothing at all can make it turn into something. The notion of a creator God is contradictory.  So creation does not rescue you from randomness.  It puts you deeper into it.

The notion of a creator God is a vicious circle. "Nothing comes from nothing. We are here so God must have made something come from nothing." It is assuming what you pretend to show as true.  Vicious circles are you trying to impose randomness on your own brain.

Our talk and belief in the laws of nature does not imply these are laws in the sense that some intelligence set them up. Any kind of universe has to have some predictability. We see that it is probable that the sun will rise tomorrow. That if you have no immunity to antibiotics they should help. We cannot live without predicting and without believing that certain things have certain effects. We cannot prove it but we assume it on the basis of probability. So we assume that nature will not change and there will be no miracles. Nobody will die and rise again in a week. Religious people pounce on the fact that we are talking about probability. They argue, "If you say it is probable that dead people cannot rise, then you admit that they might". It is true that we do. But they say this argument entitles us to argue that miracles have happened and to believe in them. It does not. The point of the argument is not that miracles might happen but that we are justified in assuming they do not and that nature is predictable. This is not the same as dogmatically refusing to admit that miracles happen. Yet you will be accused of that by the believers who do not have the honesty to tell us, "We twist things therefore do not trust us when we give you evidence for miracles." Belief in miracles is about the desire to feel protected. There is less bias in assuming miracles haven't happened in a believable way than assuming that they have. You have to assume something so why not that nature is regular? You need that belief. You do not need to believe that Mary appeared at Lourdes the way you need to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. There is more bias in saying event x or y or z is a miracle than there is in saying miracles happen but you don't know what event is a miracle or isn't. Believers do not really want to believe in miracles - they want to believe that certain events are miracles. That is the rub.

You cannot know what caused a person to rise again after being dead for days. You cannot then have evidence that it was supernatural. Maybe some unknown natural law was behind it. Miracle believers are really only miracle guessers.

Religion is abuse. It is grotesque how religion encourages people to feel that God protects them from the bad things he lets happen to others to get their devotion and money. Religion grows in power as a result. The tendency to feel that terrible things visit others and not you is increased by belief in God. It nurtures it. It can lead to complete arrogance and coldness in the face of the suffering of others. It may lead to religious people doing lots of good works too. They do the good and venture out into dangerous territory because they feel invulnerable to do it. But it is not right to encourage this patronising love and goodness. It exposes the religious people to grave danger. If you want to be heroic and risk your life for others, then it is only fair that you do it while being aware of the risks. Those who let you think there is no risk because God is with you are simply using you as a means to get good done. They dehumanise you and treat you as a way to get things done and treat you as unimportant as a person.

Deism teaches that even if God loves us he does not do magic for us. It is not religion for it is based on freethinking.  So that is a form of belief that tries to avoid the pitfalls of the divine plan doctrine.  It rules out Jesus as understood by the Bible who tried to make out differently.  Deism says that the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God does not mean you will necessarily be okay ever again.

If God cannot help for some reason despite being all-powerful, then the Deists tell you God perhaps loves you. Christians say he definitely does.  But that though should make you feel worse because you need to be upset that God suffers for you. He wants to help but cannot. Is God’s love for you really much help if he cannot help you? When you suffer enough it is relief you will want not his love.

The really good person goes out realising that anything can happen to them just as much as it can those who are in need of help.

Another reason God belief cannot rescue you from your fears about randomness and chance is that God would need to be able to love you even if he does not love your sins.  Suppose Satan needed medicine to live. If Jesus cares about his wellbeing and not his sins or how dangerous he is he will give him the medicine. If Jesus is afraid to help him for he will recover and do terrible harm to others he might refrain for their sake. That would mean that anybody loving you and hating your sins is not necessarily going to help you or work for your wellbeing. So it is odd why people take consolation from the notion that God will love the sinner and hate the sin and protect you by decreeing that people love and hate sins too. The love is not about the other person's wellbeing at all but about them.

Some claim that loving God and believing in his love may not make life easier but harder but at least whatever happens we will know he loves us. That in a nutshell is what their spirituality ultimately offers. Those who believe that God does do miracles but will be doing none for them have a similar spirituality. This describes most Christians.

Believers in religion and God deny that evil, no matter how great, shows that God’s existence is improbable or unlikely. If nothing refutes the love of God then clearly you are assuming he loves. You are not believing. You are saying you will not process any evidence that shows that your "belief" should be scrapped. That is enough to show that you cannot be trusted if you claim to believe. Assuming is not going to help much. You are simply defying the evidence.  It is too serious of a matter to simply assume that evil is somehow justified as God is love.  If you cannot love God unless you love people it follows you should be as willing to condone what people do or seem to do.
 
Religion knows that if God made us to be happy and it is not happening then God cannot exist or is useless. And faith in him is useless as well if we should be happier and he is not helping. So religion tells us we are not here to be happy and that is the reality. So it would say we are here to be moral. And that happiness is a side-effect of goodness that may or may not happen but all that matters is goodness. But why can't we assume that goodness is good for it is about trying to be happy in the right way? Morality can make us happy as much as possible and that is all we can ask for. Morality and unhappiness often going together does not mean that morality has nothing to do with happiness. It has to. A morality that advocated boredom or misery would be unintelligible.
 
Religion only tells us that life is not given to us by God for happiness so that it can make way for belief in God. If we are meant to be happy and life is so bad at making us happy then there is no God or he is bad. Simple! Maybe worshipping him makes him even viler than what he is.
 
So it all comes down to an assumption: God even if good is not about making us happy. If you are suffering you want to believe that God wants you to be relieved from it and happy. The doctrine that he does not will only add to your despair or plunge you into it a mile a minute.
 
Next did God confirm personally that he is not about making us happy? He needs to. Man has no right to say he is not about that. The issues are too serious for people are suffering.
 
Religion needs to encourage us to decide if God is about happiness or not and tell us it does not matter which one we assume. All that matters to it is getting us to assume God is not about happiness.

Believers must be deluded or inflicting fantasy on themselves for the worship of God implies you assume he is about making you and him happy together. How could you want to enjoy praising an ice-cold God who is about principles not happiness?

We conclude that believers want to reject the notion of being at the mercy of chance more than they want to believe in God.  That is what faith in God is hiding.